


Solid and Comfortable

by myrtlebroadbelt



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, First Impressions, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-03 23:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14007672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlebroadbelt/pseuds/myrtlebroadbelt
Summary: The first time Belladonna Took saw Bungo Baggins, she thought he was dead. Of course, she didn’t know him as Bungo Baggins then. He was just a hobbit who hadn’t moved from his chair in two hours.





	Solid and Comfortable

The first time Belladonna Took saw Bungo Baggins, she thought he was dead. Of course, she didn’t know him as Bungo Baggins then. He was just a hobbit who hadn’t moved from his chair in two hours.

It was the first mild evening of the year, and the Tooks, growing restless without adventure, set out to explore the farthest reaches of the Shire’s pubs. Belladonna was reaching the end of her first half-pint at the Green Dragon when she noticed a hobbit sitting by the fire. He was facing away from her in a high-backed armchair, so that all she could see was the top of his curly head and the rust-red sleeve of his corduroy jacket. She thought nothing of it, except to wonder if it was a bit warm to be sitting so close to the hearth.

She did, however, find it slightly unusual when she reached her third mug of ale and he was still there. In that time, she had approached the bar twice for refills and once for a cheese plate, crossed the room to chat with an old friend, hurried back to borrow a pinch of Isembard’s pipe-weed, won an arm wrestling contest against Isumbras, moved tables to make room for a larger party, and excused herself to wash up when Hildibrand — who was a few rounds ahead of her — splashed his drink all over the front of her dress.

The next time she noticed him, sitting still as a bullfrog, she had already clapped along to three drinking songs, climbed atop the table for two of them, and gotten Hildibrand back by kicking a mug over onto his lap. At this point, he was too drunk to care, and she was just drunk enough to jump to conclusions about the motionless hobbit by the fire.

“Isembard,” she said, tugging on her brother’s sleeve as he pounded his fists on the table in time with the latest song. “I think that fellow over there is dead.”

“Had one sip too many, is more like,” he said with a snort, taking another sip of his own.

She hadn’t considered this, but supposed it made the most sense. In any case, by the time she looked back, he was gone. Belladonna was prepared to believe in many things, but corpses getting up and walking out of pubs wasn’t one of them. She therefore assumed he had gone home to sleep it off — which is exactly what she did, in a bed upstairs.

 

She saw him again the next time they visited, in the very same chair. Indeed, if she hadn’t seen it empty the last time, she would have almost believed he had never gotten up. His sleeve was sapphire-blue now, but she recognized the chestnut hue of his hair and the angle of his elbow where it rested on the chair’s arm.

Intrigued, she made a point to look in his direction every now and then, as she whiled away the night in much the same way as last time, thankfully without any spills. He didn’t move an inch, even when the innkeeper’s ginger cat pranced across the back of his chair, batting his curls with its tail. An hour later,  after several rounds and one game of whist which had to be cut short because the cards kept sticking to the table, Belladonna once again noticed him still sitting there, and decided it was about time to spy from another angle.

She drained her mug, slid her chair back with a screech, and made her way over, fully expecting to round the corner and see a drunkard gargling on his own drool. What she found instead left her dumbfounded.

To begin with, he was much younger than she expected — not too far out of his tweens, she reckoned. He also wasn’t unconscious. On the contrary, his eyes were not only open, but perusing the pages of a book which rested open on his lap. He appeared entirely sober, as anyone would who was sipping a single glass of wine as slowly and leisurely as if it were a cup of tea. His ankles were crossed on a footstool in front of him, and a pipe sat in an ashtray on the small round table to his left.

He certainly looked like a gentleman who sat in chairs for long periods of time — the words solid and comfortable came to mind. So comfortable, in fact, that he didn’t even notice her staring at him. As he turned the page, his soft smile suggested that he was not merely awaiting a friend, or passing the time before work, or any other reason one could imagine to sit alone in the middle of a pub after dark reading a book. Indeed, it actually seemed intentional.

Belladonna found it difficult to draw her gaze away from this eccentric display, but when she finally did, she went directly to her sister-in-law Rosa, a former Baggins who knew many in Hobbiton, and who was sitting nearby with her husband Hildigrim, Belladonna’s brother.

“That fellow by the fire.” Belladonna pointed him out. “Who is he?”

Rose squinted to see. “Oh, that’s my cousin Bungo,” she said. “A good lad, he is.”

“Not much for moving, is he?”

Rosa laughed at that. “No. Much more the ‘sitting quietly’ type. Always has been." She nudged Belladonna in the ribs. "Say, would you like me to introduce you?”

“No, that’s all right. Wouldn’t want to interrupt his reading.” In truth, Belladonna preferred to make her own introductions, and would have, then and there, had she not been loudly called at that very moment to the opposite side of the room to perform her famous juggling trick.

It was only when she chased an errant apple across the floor, while her brothers howled with laughter behind her, that she realized Bungo Baggins had once again disappeared. The apple rolled to a stop against the leg of the empty chair, which still retained the sunken shape of its former occupant.

Belladonna glanced back at her brothers, who had already moved on to some new amusement. She eyed the chair, wondering what could possibly have been so comfortable about it. As her father always said, the only thing curiouser than a cat was a Took. He conveniently left out any reference to the consequences of said curiosity, but, seeing as a chair was not usually known to kill anyone, Belladonna took her chances.

The seat was still warm when she sat down. She settled back into the soft leather, stretched her legs out to reach the footstool, and rested her hands in her lap, as she had no book to hold. She closed her eyes, feeling the heat of the fire on the soles of her feet, letting the jolly buzz of the surrounding pub wash over her like a gentle breeze. There was the smell of pipe-weed on the air, and the sound of clinking glasses and conversation. She breathed in and out, slowly and deeply, noticing the rise and fall of her chest as she did so, feeling herself sinking deeper and deeper into the cushion beneath her.

Belladonna opened her eyes, stood up, and shrugged. A chair was a chair, if you asked her.

 

The next time Belladonna saw Bungo, she made her introduction. It was Midsummer’s Eve, and although he was not sitting down, it appeared he would have liked to be. He was standing beneath the party tree with a pipe in his mouth, observing the surrounding festivities as if they were a play he had yet to find entertaining.

Bungo was almost as good at standing still as he was sitting. He kept one hand in the pocket of his waistcoat and the other holding aloft the bowl of his pipe. Belladonna also noticed, with no small degree of shock, that he wasn’t tapping a single toe to the music.

“Can you dance?” she thought aloud. She had been taking a smoking break herself, and the question was muffled by the stem of her pipe.

Bungo looked at her, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

She decided she had better rephrase the question. “I said, would you like to dance?”

He stood gaping at her, and then glanced around as if he imagined her to be addressing someone else. She supposed, being a Baggins, he expected a more proper introduction.

“I’m Belladonna,” she said, holding out her hand.

With a blink, he extended his own. It was as warm as his seat cushion. “Bungo … Baggins.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, and couldn’t help but smirk. “Now, have you come to a decision about that dance?”

As it turned out, Bungo Baggins _could_ dance — but only in the strictest sense of the word. By his own admission, he’d had very little practice, a fact Belladonna felt acutely in the bones of her toes with nearly every step. He apologized profusely, but she didn’t mind — she enjoyed taking the lead, and found him very amusing.

Alas, they were not long for the dance floor. For Belladonna, a racing heart from twirling and trotting was the sign of a good time. For Bungo, it was an emergency which required immediate rest and the largest gulp of ale she had ever witnessed a hobbit take — even Hildibrand would be impressed. 

Belladonna joined him at a table while he caught his breath. “Sitting quietly,” she muttered, echoing Rosa’s words from the pub.

“Pardon?” In one movement, Bungo wiped both the foam and the sweat from his upper lip. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket for the rest of his face.

So Belladonna told him about the Green Dragon, and how fascinating she found it that he chose to sit for so long beside the fire. She politely omitted the part about thinking he was dead. Bungo, who was already looking attractively rumpled thanks to dance and drink, appeared to flush even further to hear she had been observing him. 

“Well, it’s just nice to stop and smell the roses, I suppose.”

Belladonna didn’t see what that had to do with anything. “I never much cared for the scent of roses.”

“It’s only a saying. One I made up, in fact," he said modestly. "It just means … to slow down, appreciate the little things.”

“Hmm." Belladonna considered this. "But in order to slow down, wouldn’t you first have to speed up?”

He smiled and loosened his cravat. “Well, thanks to you, I have.”

“Then I suppose it’s only polite to return the favor,” Belladonna said, and settled in with her pipe. Her seat wasn’t nearly as soft as the one in the pub, and yet, as she listened to the fireworks pop overhead and watched Bungo’s shoulders drop further and further from his ears as the night wore on, she found it even more comfortable.

**Author's Note:**

> "Bilbo ... looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his **solid and comfortable** father ..." - The Hobbit, Ch. 1
> 
> Hooray for finally writing Belladonna's POV! It's my first time, if you can believe it. She's a bit of a challenge for this Baggins, but I'd like to get into her head more.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
